Posts Tagged ‘Contractural Obligation’

You need a spreadsheet to keep up with some new releases these days and Ian Gillan’s Contractual Obligation album/s which came out at the end of July is another example, with a Blu Ray, triple vinyl and double CD being on offer.Even the label, Ear, got confused. Because each of the three formats is from a different show on the tour, you would need all three if you’re a completist!Whether the title is a nod to Monty Python’s final studio recording or not I don’t know; I assume IG signed a contract for the tour and knew this was part of it?!It is quite easy to get a bit cynical over something like this, and the performances are of necessity a little ‘rehearsed’ to keep on track with the backings, but it’s quite impressive to see the full orchestra kicking off, realising how big a deal it is for the crowd, and also how we have come to accept scenes like this compared to (gulp) fifty years ago.Hang Me Out To Dry even reminded me a bit of PAL chugging along with all the brass.As Tim points out in his comments below the guitar player has been rumoured as a possible deputy should Steve Morse need to rest up, so it’s interesting to take a listen on those grounds as well, and IG does pretty well on what I’ve listened to for my money.

The tracks are all from the live shows IG did in Europe and cover Warsaw, Moscow and St. Petersburg in late 2016 (Ear calls this ‘recent’ and does not bother to give the recording dates on their site).Set wise, and backed by Don Airey’s group and a local orchestra each night, IG romps through cover versions from solo albums, a few Purple cuts, and etc.So decent marks for not churning out the same old same old, though most of the Deep Purple songs are fairly familiar from recent tours. You might have thought with three different release they could have used a different photo on the front of each one but that must have sounded like too much hard work.The set-list seems to stay the same for each show which is understandable, as follows:

I’m enjoying the ‘Contractual Obligation’ releases by Ian Gillan – three different gigs on three different formats is a gimmick which seems to have even confused its instigators (earMUSIC), as they put up a live video for one track on YouTube, labelling it as ‘Live in Warsaw’, when it’s actually from Moscow (like the rest of the Blu-ray release). Nice to hear/see ‘Brazos’ in particular again – Ian seems better suited to singing it these days, not straining so much to get the ultra-low notes in the middle (“There’s some in the graveyard…”etc). Weird to hear IG introducing ‘Difficult to Cure’ by name (“A song by Airey, Beethoven and Blackmore”…). Some tracks (SKOW/Lazy/SOTW), I’d rather had been substituted for something a little more obscure but the pro-active orchestra (and conductor) lend them a different slant. My one criticism of the Blu-ray is that they seem to have felt that because it was filmed with 28 cameras (or whatever), they had to use all the angles as often as possible – the average length of each shot is less than 4 seconds, which, whilst it holds your attention, can be a bit wearing after a while. They do calm down a bit for the slower tracks (maybe the editing machine was somehow linked to beats-per-minute…). Possible-rumoured-Steve-Morse-live-understudy- (if needed) guitarist Simon McBride sounds good anyway – and actually reminds me of Steve (and his take on ‘Lazy’) a bit, the way his guitar cuts across the orchestra at the start of ‘Hang Me Out To Dry’. In keeping with a bit of a history of sleeve cock-ups, the CD says ‘LIVE IN IN WARSAW’ on the front… Oh and the best song Ian Gillan ever wrote* is included of course – ‘Razzle Dazzle’.

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I’d not forgotten that we have rolled around to an important anniversary, honest. Just shocked to realise we’d got the date wrong for all these years…! Seriously. It’s not so easy to find something new to say, particularly as I’ve been raving about this album for fifty years now myself. Many of us have […]

This photo has been floating about on the web for some time, but thanks to Mike Richards we can locate this to Newcastle City Hall on the 1980 Down To Earth tour. This is mainly because he spotted a mate in the balcony in the pic he went to school with! It was taken by […]

Our I Spy Car spotter days are behind us here at DTB so it’s taken us a while to catch up with this Nissan, badged the Highway Star. It was launched back in 1997 but wasn’t sold in the UK, except as an grey import (wikipedia says imports were “mainly driven by car enthusiasts, or […]

I assume we’re not the only ones to have used some of the current lockdown to do a bit of tidying. Simon tells us he found three dust masks in his shed while he was having a good sort out over Easter, the first time he’s been able to tackle this for over a year, […]

Derek Lawrence, Deep Purple’s first producer, deal maker, guiding light and without whom… died last week, May 13th 2020. It’s taken me a few days to get to grips with the news and put a few words together for this site. It is sometimes easy to overlook Mk 1’s contributions to the band’s catalogue but […]

This Is Rock magazine in Spain have kicked off the In Rock 50th anniversary with a cover feature in their latest issue, although inside it is just a single page looking back. Nice for cover collectors though. My thanks to Hugh Gilmour for the news, even if it is starting to make some of us […]

So exactly why should we be marking the passing of Little Richard here? Well, Deep Purple In Rock would not have been the same without Richard’s trail blazing contributions to rock’n roll for starters. Speed King in particular owes even more, with Ian Gillan quoting lyrics from Little Richard classics throughout (to brilliant effect). Deep […]

Tonight would have been Deep Purple’s live debut in Japan, the first of two shows in Osaka in May 1972. Tickets available at 1400 Yen to 2300 Yen (or 3300 Yen for a box seat). BUT the three shows were cancelled some time before due to a backlog in America where the band were trying […]

Ian Paice has joined the long list of musicians who have taken a leaf out of the younger generation’s book and begun putting material up on the web to entertain everyone, is promising more broadcasts to come. He was always entertaining on shows like Super Drumming and The Ian Paice Drum Tribe (has he been […]

This tickled us seen by Simon in a dusty shop window over in Bridlington a couple of years ago. It’s probably still there (the shop is just by the walk way at the top of the harbour). A set of strange ‘Dad’ mugs with various faux adverts on the side and themed handles. So this […]